is BanLink a violation of CS?

From the Community Standards:
Disclosure
Residents are entitled to a reasonable level of privacy with regard to their Second Lives. Sharing personal information about a fellow Resident --including gender, religion, age, marital status, race, sexual preference, and real-world location beyond what is provided by the Resident in the First Life page of their Resident profile is a violation of that Resident's privacy. Remotely monitoring conversations, posting conversation logs, or sharing conversation logs without consent are all prohibited in Second Life and on the Second Life Forums.

http://www.slbanlink.com/ is a widely used (and in my opinion, abused) system. The people who update the entries post IM and coversation logs and give out other private information. Isn't this a violation?

The rules you quote only apply in-game and on these forums. Outside of anything Linden Lab control, their rules cannot be enforced.

I can't say I like the idea of "banlink" personally either.

Broccoli

I agree with Broccoli ..... but doesn't the Data Protection Act have something on the matter?

Not really. Possibly if you disclose real life information that could identify the person in real life? But even then, that's a UK law, so what about the rest of the world?

Yep, realised this as I hit 'send' .. hoped you wouldn't notice

Let the uniformed speculation begin as we all know that it is far more important how you feel about a subject than what you know about that subject.

Some factual questions for instance: how many active players are on the ban list? How many of them are demonstrably unjustly on the list? How many parties subscribe to the list? How often does party A not adhere to party B's judgement? How many of those who thought themselves wrongly banned disputed it? How many of those were reversed after a brief discussion?

I don't know the answers either, so I'll just make them up: 30, 5, 3, 50%, 1, 1. See, the system works perfectly!

Cheers.

Actually, you are right... First I always look how I feel about things and after that I will look at the facts, rules, statistics and so on and so on...

And yes, for me are emotions and feelings more important then facts.

Morwen.

Your SL username is not DPA'able information (it's not "personally identifying" - unless you've made the information public knowledge, the only people that can relate your SL name to your actual RL self are Linden Lab. Allegations and reports of your in-world behaviour certainly aren't DPA material.

There is no compulsion for any venue to use Banlink. It's an automated way for venues to say "I trust other banlink venues to only banlink assholes"; and every venue has that right to set their own admission policy - be it "male-avi-only", "furries only", "no furries", "no weapons", "start wearing purple wearing purple", or whatever. If they choose to opt for "If you're banlinked from Shelter/NCI/etc. then you're banned from here", they can.

If you're banlinked from somewhere, follow the appeals process on the site - from what I can tell, most BL venues are fairly forgiving in all but the most severe cases.

(I'm not part of Banlink at present, I've just hung around Shelter and looked over the website a few times.)

Even though the actual banlink database is used independently of SL, it is used IN WORLD, and thus becomes under their jurisdiction. Users of the banlink system can access private information about IM and chat conversations directly from SL. Furthermore, information disclosure of SL informantion outside of SL is prohibited, from the test case of ebay. If you sell your account on ebay and give out your password (or, for that matter, the password of another!) and LL finds out, you will probably get banned.

Good luck complaining to Linden Lab. They are the reason systems like SLBanlink exist. The creators of SLBanlink did not decide to open the world to millions of accounts without any verification process. The creators of SLBanlink did not decide to allow essentially unlimited anonymous alts. The creators of SLBanlink did not decide to emasculate the Abuse Report system.

Linden Lab has a vision of cooperative resident government somehow arising from the chaos of the Mainland. Given the tools we have, a system like SLBanlink is about the best we can do.

nah that is just an excuse honestly

you can do things like prohibit people from using it who dont publish names responsibly etc

if you want it to be used for its intended purpose and not abused your going to have to police it a bit. If you dont have the time or can't be botherd to police it then you should not be offering it

its just like a forum or any other medium on the internet it needs looking after

sorry but you just have it there hanging out in the wind from what i can see.

Also realize that true griefers dont live for long in this venu the create and account grief like heck for 24 or 48 hours and leave and create another avatar all your doing is causing problems for "real players"

I dont tend to speak up about things unless i feel that they are important this is important and needs some major fixing i'm looking at the users and creators to do the fixing as i can't i can only point out the problems which are large

your not going to be banning a whole lot of griefers with this tool not really only just airing dirty laundry and creating a list of drama in the long run which is quite sad really

Difficult issues on both sides but I agree the situation in world is escalating beyond Linden Labs ability to control.

Therefore some type of self-government has got to be considered and an automated ban link is perhaps an elegant solution to resolve issues.

On the so called "power politics" could I point out that 4 or 5 avatars headed up by Anshe Chung could effectively ban any individual from all their land with no right of appeal to Linden, that would constitute around 20% of all virtual land, so an auto ban list is not new in theory.

However I also comment that personal conflicts and disputes should not in itself be good cause to add to a network ban list, therefore any new addition needs to be carefully reviewed by the originators of this device with the right of appeal for any affected avatar. Finally my first life legal knowledge tells me that avatars affected by such a ban list "may" have the right to first life legal redress, so if I were running such a business I would want professional indemnity insurance to meet legal claims if successful.

Having said all of that though I had an issue with a similar system a little while ago which was caused by a personal dispute with one individual. I debated the situation with the system owners and to their credit they resolved the situation. So as a first step I would suggest anybody finding themselves in this position should not over react and in the beginning negotiate with the system owners, who should have a system in place to allow this.

Just my own thoughts

Regards

John

You were probably accused of harassment because you are continuing to IM the administrators with complaints. Even though you have been told the procedure to resolve the situation and have refused--again and again--to even take the first step.

That sort of approach will make people fustrated.



You do realize that LL wants this type of service in-world?



No--it is managed quite responsibly. It would be irresponsible of the operators if they ignored their procedures and changed the system based simply on your unsubstantiated complaint.

In point of fact, Philip Linden, in the October Town Hall Meeting, was asked what the Lindens were going to do about the burgeoning griefer problem.

His response was to say that the Lindens cannot function as a police force, because the problem is of too large a scale for them to handle. Instead, he expressed the hope that peer-pressure based networked banning systems be created by the citizens, and then went on to mention SLBanlink as an example of what he was talking about.

The ToS prohibits you from mentioning the names of the accused in forums, but does not prohibit you from sharing information about them in-world, so long as you do not share private information about them (an avatar's account name or his/her behavior in public does not constitute private information). Nor does it prohibit you from discussing these matters on online services that the Lindens do not own.

Not only, therefore, is SLBanklink not simply flying "under the radar" by escaping Linden Labs notice, Linden Labs is actively encouraging the development and use of SLBanlink and systems like it to help with the griefing problem.

these are your words

so where is it that this entry is valid if you are already saying its not?

"I looked at the entry for you on SLBanlink. I think that your ban is unjustified, and that the reason the banning party gave is… well stupid. What that tells me is not to trust bans from that site. No great problem, as I was not, anyway."

sorry the quote thing i always mess up so those are your words from a post inanother thread

which is it a valid ban or a not valid ban

if its not a valid ban as you say then the list is not being operated responsibly

and yes step #1 is usualy to contact the owner of the database to request removal and teher is no real procedure on that site i read what i could and did what it told me to do.

however i did follow the sites direction and it did not tell me to do both but now you want me to do both?


im sorry i followed the procedure exactly

it gave me a choice and i took that choice now people are changing their minds

one thing that site did not cover was how to appeal a decision if removal of the name was refused so i could only do what one normally does contact the owner of the database. I do have rights you know and one of them is to not be published.

/shrug

From the SLBanklink web site:

It is up to the site that originally issued your ban to remove it.

the owner of the banlink.com site is travis lamber and mera pixel and i contact them ..

sigh

again

please remove my information from the website banlink.com that would be great thanks
bye

I don't think it means what you think it means. In this case "site" doesn't mean the web site. It means the banned person has to come to some sort of terms or agreement with the owner of the location in SL that banned them. Only that person can remove the ban. Now, other people on Banlink are free to uphold this person's ban or refuse it at their will. If the ban appears unreasonable, this is usually what happens.

the websites i am speaking of is the slbanlink.com and the posting of my information to it

the peopel i contacted are in fact the creators of the website and the ones who manage the database that makes the name visible to the public at the url slbanklink.com

this is in fact in this case the only place you can see information like this and its public !

now lets move this example to spam

i'm spamming to advertise for toyrus.com i send email the spam is reported my fly by night url get blockd and i move to another server and spam some more for toyrus.com

the website toyrus.com gets dinged and has ports blocked

toyrus.com said to me DONT SPAM but i did but they are held to blame for the actions of a guy who they did not monitor properly. Is toyrus.com to blame YES because they didnt make sure that they guy didn't spam its all nice and convenient to say we just run the site we dont worry about the integrity of it blah blah blah we aren't responsible

but that doesn't mean anything in the big bad world. They should take action and reign the guy in and fire him not ignore it.

again what is so hard to understand about this stuff.

Its like saying i drove the getaway car but i didn't rob the bank

sheesh .. lol

First of all, you are hardly unbiased. Secondly, ban link DOES reveal personal information such as IMs, as I have mentioned. I have met many good people in the world which have been banned under parts of the SLBanlink for frivilous reasons.

All that SLBanlink is, is a high-tech gossip and libel machine. The "trusted groups" thing is broken because extremely few will take the time to dispute the ban, nor even know how to (the "security devices" don't give instructions on how to challenge a ban, and simply teleport you home without warning.)

As was already mentioned, the banlink system has no affect on griefers whatsoever. Freeze, eject, and ban are the best way to stop griefers; to take it a step further and introduce a system of gossip invites abuse, as there is very little chance that one who accepts a ban list will know if a "trusted" group is abusing the system or not.

I can fully appreciate the position that Carl (and Travis) are coming from.

Estate managers in Caledon (friends of mine, NOT paid) and I are generally the babysitters and caretakers that do all the mop-up from griefing individuals.

Imagine spending 45 minutes a day out of your busy, precious, social spare time taking out the garbage, and the rest of your SL existence being 'on call' because people decide with predictable regularity to be petulant children.

So if you have a generally grief-free experience somewhere, it's likely because someone is working their tail off. BanLink is a tool that can save a lot of work, and in the right hands, probably saves the user's sanity over the long haul.




That said, even though the system isn't being abused much *now* - I can see this may be a very risky direction to take in the long run.

I have yet to see where an online system hasn't been gamed, turned and used for griefing itself (a la the old ratings system) or otherwise abused in creative ways once it gets too big to really be managed.

Because of this, I won't be using BanLink or anything like it in my own sims, ever. You'll have to get us riled up directly, or make such a notorious swath of griefing that we hear you coming without any need of BanLink to tell us.



I have a main character that isn't Desmond - just a happy-go-lucky, landless, broke guy that tries to be encouraging and helpful. He's nobody on the grid, and I tell you what - it's like night and day the way I'm treated.

There are some *very* awful sim owners on the grid - I suspect people who are at the mercy of others in their first lives, and thus use the grid to 'balance' things a bit.

We might just be a small speck on the western side of the grid, but I'd rather try a little harder, than ever ban someone who is really a decent person.

Okay - yup, I'm not unbiased. It doesn't change the truth of my statements, though - you can go look at the transcript of that town hall meeting for yourself.

I agree that the appeals process could be made easier to access, and that the system could take more care to tell you why you're being ejected and what you can do about it, that's a really good, valid criticism of the system. It's certainly not a work carved in stone, though, and I'm sure these issues are being addressed even as we speak.

As far as it having no effect on griefers at all, I really have to disagree with you on that one. It's keeping griefers out of common target areas, and in that sense, it's doing what it was built to do.

Peer pressure is about the only tool we have to get rid of the serial griefers - AR's do work, but they take six or seven months. This puts at least some modicum of control over the situation in the hands of the citizens who want to share griefer information with one another.

For example, there is one member that insists on unbanning people who have admitted to being under 18, claiming that have the grid is under 18, and that this is not a basis for banning. I personally disagree; if you're underage, you are in violation of the ToS and belong on the Teen Grid, sorry. So I removed that group from my trusted peer list. Now I don't listen to those people's unbannings, and their vote no longer counts for the banlists on my groups parcels.

So the peer review system does function. Certainly no system is perfect, but this is the best designed one there is, with the fewest inherent problems.

i have yet to find any appeals process on that site if you talking about the stuff i did that is not an appeals process hehe

if your talking about going to a guy who has me muted or whatever or is just a plain idiot that is not an appeals process either

the only thing i could do was seek to ask because i have yet to actualy FIND an appeals process on that site and when i asked the site creator to remove the name he asked me not to bug him lol..

i put in my 200 characters of information and that was that lol nothing more its there never to change never to really be dealt with that is not an appeals process its just a few words

anyhow its quite clear that the users of the system feel its the greatest thing since sliced bread not sure why you can do it the old fashioned way and avoid the publication thing so that people dont get harmed but that is just me i guess and it appears that no one really truly cares about the individual or anything just their ability to ban more effectively that's nice

happy banning do it in good health

This is so much like the DNS blacklists such as RBL, it's scary. Many of those lists were IMPOSSIBLE to clear your IP addresses from, appeal procedures be damned. The problem with this is that there is nobody to mind the minders of the database. It relies on the honesty and integrity of the original party who entered the ban record. No investigation, no checking of facts, no inquiry as to whether or not the original complaining party is just being an asshole. Just a network of complacent subscribers saying "sorry, you're on the list.. you must have done something to deserve the ban."

The DNS blacklists prove that this is just not a good solution.